With Hostile Intent

Chapter Twelve Jabbar

It was incredible, thought Colonel Jabbar. He was alive.

Not only was he alive, he was flying.

Had Jabbar been a true believer, which he was not, he might have attributed this miracle to the Divine Being. This would seem to be an undeniable instance of intervention by Allah. That Colonel Jabbar’s life had been spared at the very moment of his execution by firing squad was simply too miraculous for any other explanation.

Except, of course, for one. The sudden reversal of his fate as he stood facing the loaded carbines of the Republican Guard was exactly the sort of capricious melodrama that Saddam loved to orchestrate. Immediate death sentences, instant reprieves — all were rendered and reversed in the presidential court of Saddam Hussein like alternating weather reports.

But here he was, alive. And flying again.

Jabbar nudged the MiG’s throttles forward a notch. Beneath him swept the monotonous brown desert of western Iraq. To his right, stepped up a thousand feet, was his wingman, Captain Suluman Faisal.

They were flying low and fast, skimming the floor of the desert at a speed of over 800 kilometers per hour. Faisal was his safety pilot, peering out ahead for danger while Jabbar concentrated on low-level navigation. Faisal was a competent airman, unlike the hapless Captain Al-Fariz, deceased nephew of Saddam.

Faisal, of course, was not happy about today’s training mission. He had been told nothing about the purpose of the mission, or what sort of munitions delivery they were simulating. Like most fighter pilots, Faisal preferred to be up in the stratosphere where they were supposed to engage enemy fighters. Instead, they were hurtling across dunes and dwarf trees like lowly air-to-ground attack pilots.

“Be alert, Red lead,” came Faisal’s voice on the tactical frequency. “Vehicles ahead, twelve o’clock, three kilometers.”

“Red lead is looking.”

Jabbar peered through his windscreen. What were they? Military trucks? One of the Shiite caravans on the move…

He spotted a column of dust. Half a dozen rickety trucks with home-made containers strapped to the beds were bumping down the unpaved road. Smugglers, probably, hauling contraband on their return trip from the Kurdish-held territory near the Turkish border.

Jabbar dipped the MiG’s right wing, altering course just enough that he would go blasting directly over the column. The trucks were moving eastward. They wouldn’t see the fighters bearing down on them from behind.

Jabbar dropped the MiG down until he was no more than fifty feet over the tops of the trucks.

Closer… closer… Jabbar saw a passenger in the back of the truck look up, suddenly spot the fighters. His mouth opened….

Wharrrrooom! The MiG-29 roared over the truck column at nearly supersonic speed.

Jabbar pulled up and rolled the MiG into a vertical bank so he could look back over his shoulder. The lead truck had careened into a gully beside the road. The other trucks in the column were stopped. Their occupants were sprinting into the desert like ants from a mound.

Jabbar had to laugh. That would give them some excitement, he thought. Smuggling had become a routine business in Iraq since the sanctions. Now the terrified buggers would think that Saddam had sent attack jets out to seek and destroy their miserable vehicles. They wouldn’t stop running until they’d put several kilometers between them and the convoy.

Jabbar returned his thoughts to the training mission. Back to low-altitude navigation, flying over the floor of the desert. Back to training for the real mission. Jabbar eased the MiG down again to a hundred feet above the sand.

Too bad, he thought, focusing his gaze on the landscape blurring past him. Too bad that the real mission wouldn’t be as easy as sneaking up on smugglers. The real enemy would not be so easy to surprise. And most certainly the real enemy would not run for the desert like a frightened rabbit.

The thought filled Colonel Jabbar with a cold dread. It was why he had been spared from the firing squad. He had been given an assignment that was as deadly as standing before a squad of Republican Guard riflemen.

Jabbar still didn’t know what weapon — or weapons — would be mounted on his MiG-29. But already he had managed to piece together parts of the puzzle, like an elaborate mosaic. He could deduce that it was almost certainly an air-launched missile. He was sure that it was a weapon that could be deployed from very low altitude at a distance of at least three hundred fifty kilometers from the target.

Now he was certain of another fact: The weapon possessed massive destructive power. Enough to obliterate a hundred-thousand-ton warship.

Walking toward the ready room, Maxwell could feel the movement of the ship under him.

The recall of the Reagan’s crew had been very successful. Fewer than a hundred sailors were unaccounted for, a statistic that amazed old hands who could remember when a recalled aircraft carrier would head to sea leaving a quarter of its complement behind in local brothels and bars.

One more way in which the New Navy was different, thought Maxwell.

When he entered the Roadrunner ready room, Undra Cheever, the squadron duty officer, was chewing on a doughnut. His face lit up when he saw Maxwell come into the ready room. “The skipper wants to see you in his office ASAP.”

Maxwell nodded. It meant that DeLancey was back in attack mode.

After a quick coffee, he checked his mail, then headed up the passageway to DeLancey’s office.

As usual, DeLancey didn’t invite him to sit. He got right to the point. “You’re a security risk, Maxwell. I’m going to have you relieved.”

Maxwell had no idea what he was talking about. This was DeLancey’s style, to lead with an outrageous statement. Throw you off balance before getting to the point.

“May I ask how you’ve determined that I’m a security risk?"

A knowing smile spread over DeLancey’s face. “The Phillips woman. You’ve been screwing someone known to be anti-military, then spilling classified information to her.”

Maxwell nodded. It explained the peculiar look DeLancey gave him while they were waiting back at the fleet landing for the boat. It was absurd.

“I presume you can prove this?”

“I don’t have to. She’s getting information from someone. It’s you she’s been with. That makes you a security risk. You can save yourself and the Navy a lot of trouble by simply resigning.”

Maxwell was getting the picture. DeLancey wanted him to cave in and quit. He considered for a moment, then he reached for the telephone on DeLancey’s desk. “Do you want to call the Judge Advocate General’s office now?”

“JAG? Why?”

“You’re going to be a defendant in a defamation case. If Miss Phillips doesn’t do it, I promise you I will.”

“This is the United States Navy. You can’t sue your commanding officer.”

“And you can’t have an officer relieved because of your own perverted suspicions. I’ll remind you, Killer, slander is a violation of the military code of justice.” He picked up the phone and held it out it to DeLancey. “Want me to make the call? Might as well get started.”

The smile was gone from DeLancey’s face. “Don’t pull that lawyer shit with me. We both know that you’re banging that reporter. And we both know that one way or another, I’m gonna get you busted out of here.”

“Thanks for the warning, Skipper. Will that be all?”

DeLancey glowered at him in silence.

Maxwell turned on his heel and left.

“When?” Tyrwhitt asked.

“Soon. Two weeks. Perhaps a month.”

“That’s pretty indefinite.”

“What do you expect?” the man snapped. “A printed time table? This is Iraq.”

“Of course. I’m sorry.”

Tyrwhitt reminded himself to be careful. Don’t push too hard. The man was obviously sensing danger. He might get spooked and run.

As arranged, they met in the old souk, the one in the north part of the city near the B’aath building. This time the man was already in the stall, examining carpets. He had purchased one cheap Persian and was fiddling with another.

He seemed more edgy this time. Tyrwhitt gave him a moment to calm down. “Do you know the source?”

“North Korea. Probably by way of Afghanistan.”

The usual suspects, thought Tyrwhitt. The fraternal brotherhood of terrorist countries.

“How are they delivered?” asked Tyrwhitt.

“Overland, by truck at night. You know about Iraq’s oil business?”

“I thought Iraq was forbidden to export oil.”

“It’s quite clever, really,” said the man. “They use these trucks with tanks welded to the long flat beds. Every night they transport the refined oil across the desert. They deliver it to the Kurds in the north, Shiites in the south, to the Iranians in the northeast.”

“Iraq’s sworn enemies?”

The man shrugged. “Capitalism thrives in strange circumstances.” Tyrwhitt thought he glimpsed a wry smile beneath the man’s cloaked face. In the shadowed stall, he couldn’t see the man’s face clearly, but that voice — yes, it could be. The colonel he met at the minister’s reception.

“They sell it at one-quarter the world price,” the man went on. “The oil is forwarded to depots in Turkey and Jordan and Iran and resold at twice the amount. Everyone makes money. For the return trip, the tanker trucks are flushed and converted to dry cargo carriers. The trucks haul goods over the desert back to Baghdad.”

“What goods?”

“Items that the sanctions have denied Iraq. Everything from canned food to drugs to ammunition.”

Tyrwhitt was beginning to get the picture. “And missiles?”

“Of course.”

It was so obvious — and workable. High tech weaponry was being smuggled along the same ancient routes used by nomadic traders for the past thousand years.

“Do you know what type?” Tyrwhitt asked.

“Kraits. The new, long range version, manufactured in China. They now have at least ten with mobile surface launchers. I know of two more that have been prepared for air launch.”

Tyrwhitt tried to fix the numbers in his mind. The information was too vital for him to get it wrong. “What about warheads? Do they have any?”

The man didn’t answer right away. “Everything the coalition suspected that Saddam had, he has.”

“You mean —”

“Anthrax. Sarin gas. Botulinim toxin. Aflatoxin. Weaponized and ready for munitions delivery.”

Tyrwhitt nodded. It was worse than he expected. Everyone knew that Saddam had biological weapons, despite the efforts of the United Nations inspection teams. But no one seriously believed that he had the means to deploy them. How could this be going on without the coalition’s intelligence services picking it up? Or had they?

Great Christ almighty, thought Tyrwhitt. Biological weapons, deployed aboard missiles. That meant urban and industrial targets. The populated centers of Iraq’s enemies — Tel Aviv, Kuwait City, the military and commercial complexes of Saudi Arabia — all within range of the Krait missiles.

To use such weapons against civilians would be the most heinous crime in history. Surely Saddam knew that retribution would come from —

Tyrwhitt caught himself. There had to be more. Of course there was. Biological weapons would not be effective against well-prepared military sites, especially armored and moveable sites like aircraft carriers.

There was more.

Tyrwhitt had to force himself to ask the next question. “You said ‘everything the coalition suspected.’ Does that mean Iraq possesses —”

“Nuclear warheads?” For the first time the man looked directly at Tyrwhitt’s face. The intense brown eyes seemed to peer right into Tyrwhitt’s thoughts. “Certainly. And he will use them.” The man sniffed and turned his face away. “Tyrwhitt, must you always stink of whiskey?”

Don’t let the bastards see you cry.

B. J. Johnson had to keep telling herself that. She was near the breaking point. She knew she should have expected something when she came into the ready room. She should have known by the way Undra Cheever and Hozer Miller were lurking in the front of the room, watching her like a couple of vultures.

The dirty tricks were getting dirtier. One day last week when she suited up for flying, she discovered that her torso harness — a nylon outer garment with fittings that attached the pilot to the Hornet’s ejection seat — had a lacey push-up bra neatly sewn inside. She had forced a laugh and let it go. Frat boy stuff.

Then a few days later she found her flight suit bristling with white objects. They were tampons, protruding like white pennants from the sleeve pockets. Again she ignored it. She knew that if she threw a tantrum about such things, the bastards would never let up.

The anonymous phone calls — one less trap than you have launches — had stopped, but now she was getting these notes. They were the same stuff, nasty and anonymous. She hadn’t shown them to Maxwell as he had requested. It would just make it worse, she thought, having a senior officer spring to her defense like a white knight. She would be branded as another wimpy female who couldn’t take the heat.

As usual, she had entered through the back door of the ready room and gone directly to her chair. The chairs were airline-style recliners with the name patch of a squadron pilot velcroed on the headrest. Beneath each chair was a drawer in which the pilot kept briefing sheets, kneeboards, personal gear. It was also a message drop.

The ready room was filled this morning. Killer DeLancey was in the front of the room, on the phone with someone. Brick Maxwell was standing at a briefing table talking with Pearly Gates.

B. J. had opened the drawer beneath her chair. Inside the drawer lay an unfamiliar object — a cloth bag with a note attached. Without thinking, she immediately opened the bag. She took out the objects inside.

It was a pair of shiny steel balls.

She could feel Cheever and Miller’s eyes riveted on her as she read the attached note.

A deathly silence had fallen over the ready room. She could feel every pilot’s eyes on her. DeLancey was staring, a look of intense interest on his face. Maxwell had stopped what he was doing and was looking at her. B. J. wanted to hide. Cram the insulting note and the bag back inside the drawer. Slam it shut and get out of this hateful place.

It was too late. Everyone had seen her open the bag and read the note. Cheever and Miller were cracking up, chortling like a pair of baboons. The other pilots were gawking like spectators at a wreck. They were waiting, she realized, for her to break down. They expected her to scream, sob, go on a world class crying jag. It would prove everything they held true about women pilots.

The truth was, that was exactly what she felt like doing at this moment. Her lower lip trembled. She couldn’t deal with any more of this shit. Wear these proudly. All she wanted to do now was sit down and bury her face in her hands.

But she couldn’t. Not here. Don’t let the bastards see you cry. That was her mantra these days.

She looked around the room. Cheever and Miller were still cackling. Not much doubt about who the ball-donors were. Maxwell had figured it out too. His face was a dark mask, glowering at the two. If she didn’t do something, the white knight was going to come out.

She did something. She held up the steel balls, letting everyone see them. Clacking them together in her right hand, she walked over to where Cheever and Miller were parked at the squadron duty desk. “Did you guys do this?”

They stared back at her. Neither answered. Even Maxwell was peering at her with curiosity.

She clacked the balls together again. Actually, she thought, she rather liked that hard, metallic feel of the spheres in her hand. Clacking them together like that seemed to embolden her. What the hell, it worked for Captain Queeg, didn’t it?

As she turned to exit the ready room, she looked again at Cheever and Miller. They weren’t laughing. “Thanks, guys,” she said. “Now I have the balls, and you don’t.”

No doubt about it, thought Whitney Babcock, studying his reflection in the mirror. He had that look about him, the look of a man destined to command.

He was wearing his favorite shipboard outfit — starched military khakis with a web belt and a black name tag that bore a gold-embossed inscription:

He reminded himself to arrange some publicity photos in this outfit.

He turned from the mirror and faced Killer DeLancey. “Maxwell? The ex-astronaut in your squadron?”

“That’s him,” said DeLancey. “He busted out of NASA, then his father got him orders to my squadron. CAG overrode my request to get rid of him, and now he’s my operations officer.”

“He’s a security problem? How long has this been going on?”

“Quite a while, we think. We know he’s been seeing the Phillips woman since Dubai, but probably long before that.”

“You think she’s pumping him for classified information?”

“I’m almost certain,” said DeLancey. “But I don’t want to jump to conclusions. He’s still one of my officers. Rather than destroy his career with a scandal, I thought it would be best just to have him reassigned.”

Babcock nodded. “Well, it’s commendable, Killer, being concerned about your people. But if we’ve got a security leak, we have to take measures.”

“I thought, sir, that —”

Babcock waved his hand. “Just call me Whit.”

“Okay, Whit. I thought that a call from you might cut through all the red tape. We could get a quick security check on this reporter to find out what damage might have been done. And maybe Maxwell could just be quietly transferred.”

“I have a conference call with the Secretary of the Navy and the White House this afternoon. When I’m finished, I’ll tell someone in the department to put a detailer on the Maxwell matter.”

“I appreciate your help, Whit.”

The two shook hands. Babcock waited until DeLancey left the office, then resumed studying his image in the mirror.